1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to description support apparatus and methods for requisition sheet, and recording media and, more particularly, to description support apparatus and methods for requisition sheet, and recording media which are suitably used for apparatus for supporting description of a requisition sheet used for system development such as software development.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, in system development using a computer, a requisition sheet for a system is defined, and steps such as basic design and detail design are performed. The system is then coded. The resultant system is debugged, as needed. In this manner, the system is completed. Of these steps, the definition of the requisition sheet is especially important. If an ambiguous description or misleading description is made in a requisition sheet, the system designed and created on the basis of the contents of the requisition sheet becomes useless or cannot meet user's expectation.
If a requisition sheet is not properly described, a problem associated with the requisition sheet often arises in system development at the end of design or the beginning of coding. It is not easy to correct an error in this stage, resulting in an enormous development cost. In contrast to this, if a requisition sheet is properly described first, the occurrence of redoing operation can be minimized. It is therefore very important to describe a requisition sheet properly.
In many cases, however, requisition sheets cannot be correctly described in spite of the fact that requisition sheets are very important as described above.
Conventionally, in a preliminary stage for system development, operation performed by a person, the generation and flow of data, data output operation, and the like are described by using a human language and drawings in association with the contents of a current system and improved system or new system and the like, mainly the functions of the system. Recently, various methods have been used to describe requisition sheets. Of these methods, a method using a so-called use case for making a description in consideration of the use of a system instead of its function has been available.
Although various description methods for requisition sheets are available, omissions and errors in system design are manually checked from the described contents regardless of the type of method used. For example, a person sees a text or drawing itself described as a requisition sheet to make various checks on generation, use relationships, outputting, etc., of data, and also check who inputs what data and performs what operation.
Since these checks are manually performed, oversights and errors tend to occur. Although such checks can be made by using a computer or the like, it has not been clear how such checks are accurately and easily performed. If a check error or omission occurs, a correct requisition sheet cannot be described after all, resulting in redoing operation afterward. This greatly increases the development cost. In order to check description errors, omissions, and the like in a requisition sheet, it is important to check a system on the basis of the created requisition sheet. This is, however, very cumbersome and time-consuming operation.